Introduced by Celonis
When tariff charges change in a single day, corporations have 48 hours to mannequin alternate options and act earlier than opponents safe the most effective choices. At Celosphere 2025 in Munich, enterprises demonstrated how they’re turning that chaos into aggressive benefit — with quantifiable outcomes that separate winners from losers.
Vinmar Worldwide: Theglobal plastics and chemical compounds distributor created a real-time digital twin of its $3B provide chain, chopping default expedites by greater than 20% and bettering supply agility throughout international operations.
Florida Crystals: One in all America's largest cane sugar producers, the corporate unlocked hundreds of thousands in working capital and strengthened provide chain resilience by eliminating handbook rework throughout Finance, Procurement, and Inbound Provide. AI pilots now prolong features into bill processing, predictive upkeep, and order administration.
ASOS: The ecommerce vogue big related its end-to-end provide chain for full transparency, lowering course of variation, accelerating speed-to-market, and bettering buyer expertise at scale.
The frequent thread right here: course of intelligence that bridges the hole conventional ERP techniques can’t shut — connecting operational dots throughout ERP, finance, and logistics techniques when seconds matter.
“The question isn’t whether disruptions will hit,” says Peter Budweiser, Basic Supervisor of Provide Chain at Celonis. “It’s whether your systems can show you what’s breaking fast enough to fix it.”
That visibility hole prices the typical firm double-digit hundreds of thousands in working capital and aggressive positioning. As 54% of provide chain leaders face disruptions day by day, the strain is shifting to AI brokers that execute actual actions: triggering buy orders, rerouting shipments, adjusting stock. However an autonomous agent appearing on stale or siloed information could make million-dollar errors when tariff constructions shift in a single day.
Tariffs, as outdated as commerce itself, have develop into the last word stress check for enterprise AI — revealing whether or not corporations actually perceive their provide chains and whether or not their AI might be trusted to behave.
Trendy ERP: Knowledge wealthy, perception poor
Provide chain leaders face a paradox: drowning in information whereas ravenous for perception. Conventional enterprise techniques — SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft — seize each transaction meticulously.
SAP logs the acquisition order. Oracle tracks the cargo. The warehouse system data stock motion. Every performs its operate, however when tariffs change and firms must mannequin different sourcing eventualities throughout all three concurrently, the info sits in silos.
“What’s changed is the speed at which disruptions cascade,” says Manik Sharma, Head of Provide Chain GTM AI at Celonis. “Traditional ERP systems weren’t built for today’s volatility.”
Corporations generate 1000’s of stories displaying what occurred final quarter. They wrestle to reply what occurs if tariffs improve 25% tomorrow and want to modify suppliers inside days.
Tariffs: The 48-hour scramble
World commerce volatility has remodeled tariffs from predictable prices into strategic weapons. When new charges drop with unprecedented frequency, enter prices spike throughout suppliers, finance groups scramble to calculate margin affect, and procurement races to establish alternate options buried in disconnected techniques the place nobody is aware of if switching suppliers delays shipments or violates contracts.
By hour 48, opponents who already modeled eventualities execute provider switches whereas late movers face capability constraints and premium pricing.
Course of intelligence adjustments that dynamic by permitting companies to constantly mannequin “what-if” eventualities, displaying leaders how tariff adjustments cascade by means of suppliers, contracts, manufacturing strains, warehouses, and clients. When charges hit, corporations can transfer inside hours as a substitute of days.
No AI with out PI: Why course of intelligence is non-negotiable for provide chains
AI and provide chains are mutually dependent: AI wants operational context, and provide chains want AI to maintain tempo with volatility. However right here's the reality — there isn’t any AI with out PI. With out course of intelligence, AI brokers function blindly.
The continuing SAP migration wave illustrates why. An estimated 85–90% of SAP clients are nonetheless transferring from ECC to S/4HANA. Transferring to newer databases doesn’t remedy provide chain visibility — it gives quicker entry to the identical fragmented information.
Kerry Brown, a metamorphosis evangelist at Celonis, sees this throughout industries.
“Organizations are shifting from PeopleSoft to Oracle, or EBS to Fusion. The bulk is in SAP,” she explains. “But what they really need isn’t a new ERP. They need to understand how work actually flows across systems they already have.”
That requires end-to-end operational context. Course of intelligence gives this by enabling corporations to extract and join occasion information throughout techniques, displaying how processes execute in actual time.
This distinction turns into essential when deploying autonomous brokers. When visibility is fragmented, autonomous brokers can simply make selections that seem rational regionally however create downstream disruption. With real-time context, AI can function with readability and precision, and provide chains can keep forward of tariff-driven disruption.
Digital Twins: Powering real-time response
The businesses highlighted at Celosphere all utilized the identical precept: perceive how processes run throughout techniques in actual time. Celonis PI creates a digital twin above present techniques, utilizing its Course of Intelligence Graph to hyperlink orders, shipments, invoices, and funds end-to-end. Dependencies that conventional integrations miss develop into seen. A delay in SAP immediately reveals its affect throughout Oracle, warehouse scheduling, and buyer supply commitments.
“The platform brings together process data spanning systems and departments, enriched with business context that powers AI agents to transform operations effectively,” says Daniel Brown, Chief Product Officer at Celonis.
With this cross-system consciousness, Celonis coordinates actions throughout advanced workflows involving AI brokers, people, and automations — particularly essential when tariffs pressure fast selections about suppliers, shipments, and clients.
Zero-copy integration allows immediate modeling
A key development unveiled at Celosphere — zero-copy integration with Databricks — removes one other barrier. Historically, analyzing provide chain information meant copying from supply techniques into central warehouses, creating information latency.
Celonis Knowledge Core now integrates instantly with platforms like Databricks and Microsoft Material, querying billions of data in close to actual time with out duplication. When commerce coverage shifts, corporations mannequin alternate options immediately, not after in a single day information refresh cycles.
Enhanced Job Mining extends this by connecting desktop exercise — keystrokes, mouse clicks, display scrolls — to enterprise processes. This exposes handbook work invisible to system logs: spreadsheet gymnastics, electronic mail negotiations, cellphone calls that hold provide chains transferring throughout pressing adjustments.
Aggressive benefit in risky markets
Most corporations can’t rip out and change techniques working essential operations — nor ought to they. Course of intelligence affords a distinct path: compose workflows from present techniques, deploy AI the place it creates worth, and adapt constantly as circumstances change. This “Free the Process” motion liberates corporations from inflexible architectures with out forcing wholesale alternative.
As international commerce volatility intensifies, the businesses that mannequin will transfer quicker, make smarter selections, and switch tariff chaos into aggressive benefit — all whereas present ERPs hold working.
When the following wave of tariffs hits — and it’ll — corporations gained’t have days to reply. They’ll have hours. The query isn’t whether or not your ERP captures the info. It’s whether or not your techniques join the dots quick sufficient to matter.
Missed Celosphere 2025? Meet up with all of the highlights right here.
Sponsored articles are content material produced by an organization that’s both paying for the publish or has a enterprise relationship with VentureBeat, and so they’re all the time clearly marked. For extra data, contact gross [email protected].
